Yesterday morning, I wrote about the closed-door International Telecommunications Union meeting where they were working on standardizing "deep packet inspection" -- a technology crucial to mass Internet surveillance. Other standards bodies have refused to touch DPI because of the risk to Internet users that arises from making it easier to spy on them. But not the ITU.

The ITU standardization effort has been conducted in secret, without public scrutiny. Now, Asher Wolf writes,

I publicly asked (via Twitter) if anyone could give me access to documents relating to the ITU's DPI recommendations, now endorsed by the U.N. The ITU's senior communications officer, Toby Johnson, emailed me a copy of their unpublished policy recommendations.

OOOPS!

5 hours later, they emailed, asking me not to publish it, in part or in whole, and that it was for my eyes only.

Please publish it (credit me for sending it to you.)

Also note:

1. The recommendations *NEVER* discuss the impact of DPI.

2. A FEW EXAMPLES OF POTENTIAL DPI USE CITED BY THE ITU:

"I.9.2 DPI engine use case: Simple fixed string matching for BitTorrent"
"II.3.4 Example “Forwarding copy right protected audio content”"
"II.3.6 Example “Detection of a specific transferred file from a particular user”"
"II.4.2 Example “Security check – Block SIP messages (across entire SIP traffic) with specific content types”"
"II.4.5 Example “Identify particular host by evaluating all RTCP SDES packets”"
"II.4.6 Example “Measure Spanish Jabber traffic”"
"II.4.7 Example “Blocking of dedicated games”"
"II.4.11 Example “Identify uploading BitTorrent users”"
"II.4.13 Example “Blocking Peer-to-Peer VoIP telephony
with proprietary end-to-end application control protocols”"
"II.5.1 Example “Detecting a specific Peer-to-Peer VoIP telephony with proprietary end-to-end application control protocols”"

Read the rest

Having been promised a chance to meet with the delegates at the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership treaty meeting in New Zealand, a representatives from nonprofit public interest groups around the world flew to Auckland. Once they arrived, the TPP announced that they would be granted 15 minutes, total, for all of the groups to make a statement.

TPP is a sweeping copyright treaty, a kind of ACTA on steroids, being conducted without any public scrutiny or input -- only governments and giant corporations are welcome in the negotiating room. It has profound implications for the future of medicine, Internet regulation, and privacy and surveillance.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the groups that sent a representative to Auckland. They've published an open letter signed by the public interest coalition protesting their shabby treatment at the hands of TPP's administrators.

Academics, experts, consumer groups, Internet freedom organizations, libraries, educational institutions, patients and access to medicines groups have flown a long way from around the world to Auckland, New Zealand, to engage with delegates in the 15th round of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.

For the first time, however, we have been locked out of the entire venue, except for a single day out of the 10 days of negotiations. This not only alienates us as members of public interest groups, but also the hundreds of thousands of innovators, educators, patients, students, and Internet users who have sent messages to government representatives expressing their concerns with the TPP. All of us oppose the complete unjustifiable secrecy around the negotiations, but more importantly, the IP provisions that could potentially threaten our rights, and innovation.

These new physical restrictions on us are reflective of the ongoing lack of transparency that has plagued the TPP negotiations from the very beginning.

Digital Rights Groups Shut Out of Secret TPP Negotiations

Earlier this week, I wrote about how UK ISPs were blocking The Promo Bay, a site launched by The Pirate Bay to promote independent artists who didn't having their material shared. The ISPs had been ordered by a court to block The Pirate Bay, but seemed to have added The Promo Bay on orders from the record industry. Now the UK record industry body, the BPI, has graciously decided that it won't insist on blocking a site dedicated to promoting artists who have the audacity to make music without signing up for one of their awful record deals.

"Until very recently, the domain name 'promobay.org' linked directly to The Pirate Bay and it was therefore a domain name blocked by the ISPs under the court orders," wrote BPI chairman Geoff Taylor.

"The newly reinvented Promobay.org website appears not to be engaged in copyright infringement and we therefore asked the relevant ISPs yesterday to no longer block it."

The BPI could not be reached for further comment on Wednesday, but the BBC understands that Promobay.org will be made available again within 24 hours.

Note how Geoff Taylor implies that when The Promo Bay was associated with The Pirate Bay that it was engaged in copyright infringement, but isn't any longer. Of course, this is utter rubbish -- the site was never engaged in copyright infringement. If the record industry asked to have it censored, the industry was either incredibly cavalier about censorship, or it cynically opted to screw over the artists who had the audacity to go it on their own. Either way, the industry has demonstrated (again) its total unfitness to act as judge, jury and executioner on the Internet.

Pirate Bay spin-off site Promo Bay to be unblocked [Dave Lee/BBC]

Twig Case company has a few new Jim Woodring designs for the iPhone 5 (plus the 4/4s). I'm partial to this Pupshaw/Frank/Manhog illo!

Check out all the designs (including this one by yours truly) at Twig.

Our latest Boing Boing T-shirt was designed by Alex Pearson! It makes a great gift for all your rocket-bike enthusiast friends!

Boing Boing Rocket Bike T-shirt

See all of our offerings in the Boing Boing Shop.

Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle, WA is having two simultaneous solo shows with new paintings by two of my favorites: Femke Hiemstra and Ryan Heshka. It opens Friday December 7th 6-9pm, and both artists will be in attendance. The show runs through January 5th.

Roq La Rue is very pleased to present two solo shows for our last show of 2012, with gallery favorites Femke Hiemstra and Ryan Heshka. Please join us for a festive opening party on December 7th with drinks and music. All are welcome.

Femke Hiemstra’s meticulously tight, jewel like mixed media paintings and exquisitely rendered black and white drawings are homes to a dark fairytale land where inanimate objects come to life and frolic with animal neighbors. Lollipops become ship captains, strawberries become giant wrestlers, and vegetables become Halloween gods with lantern eyes. Femke occasionally uses typography in her work, using words from various languages and letters in her paintings to further enhance the narrative while still retaining a playful sense of mystery, or as a visual device to frame in the scenery, as if you were looking at her world through a secret window. She also uses found objects to paint on, such as boxes and wrappers, to create imaginary products with magical properties. Drawing from a range of influences, from firework wrappers to Japanese woodblock prints, Femke’s use of both pop culture detritus and child-like fantasy create a vi! brant playground for the imagination, with each piece looking like a portal for a fantastic adventure, which is left up to the viewer to imagine the story that lies inside.

Ryan Heshka unapologetically pays homage to Golden Era sci fi pulp while creating a style that is also uniquely his own. He explores themes of man vs nature, (even though often the "nature" is from another world) as well as the exploring the ideology of pushing the limits of science as a tool to help and further mankind, and the technological terrors that can be inadvertently unleashed as a result. His work is usually acrylic painted on wood panel, heavily varnished and embellished with tags cut from pulp magazines, which serve as inspiration and explanation of each piece. This new show will feature a range of paintings including some of his largest works to date.

Femke Hiemstra "Let The Devil Wear Black"

Ryan Heshka "Disasterama"